Listen: Philip Rosedale & I Talk About Transforming the Future of Second Life & Making a More Humane Metaverse

Wagner James Au · Philip Rosedale & Wagner James Au on the future of Second Life & the Metaverse

UPDATE, January 21: Bumped up for weekend conversation!

On the day when Philip Rosedale announced his return to Second Life and his plans to compete with Big Tech's "ad-driven behavior modification" would-be Metaverse projects, he and I had a long chat about just that subject -- listen above. This audio is actually a rough cut for an upcoming podcast series that Philip and I are developing, but he very coolly gave New World Notes readers this exclusive early listen sneak preview.

Here's some highlights from our chat:

0:00 - 2:45 : How I become Hamlet Au and Second Life's embedded journalist, and meeting the legendary hacker Catherine Omega in one of my very first visits. (Who Philip recently reconnected with in-world, as she still visits from time to time.)

2:45 - 4:50: Walking across the single-shard world of Second Life -- and the missing opportunity of missing serendipity of metaverse platforms without a single contiguous world.

4:51 - 8:20: The end of SL's telehubs and whether we should remove Second Life's point to point teleportation, which leads to Philip talking about Neal Stephenson's recent novel Fall; or Dodge in Hell, and a prototype he built while at High Fidelity. We compare and contrast that with Decentraland and other crytpo-based virtual world platforms.

8:21 - 11:39: How much detail with avatars are needed to make a virtual world seem real? We compare Minecraft and ROBLOX's blocky avatars with Second Life's ultra-real avatars, which have shaped SL to evolve into a fashion world. But will adults use ROBLOX and Minecraft, which are mainly popular with kids? 

11:35 - 12:30: Is Second Life mainly driven by meeting new people or having fun with existing friends? I say the former because SL is too difficult for 99% of people to use and doesn't have a mobile app.

12:31 - 21:15: Remembering the War of the Jessie Wall and the combat zone that led to emergent social protest during the US-led invasion of Iraq. Philip and I relate this to the state of avatar-based civility and conflict, as compared to algorithmically-leveraged interaction on Facebook and other social networks. This is partly because because our avatars adopt the unwritten rules of eye contact and personal space, according to a report by Nick Yee at Stanford. Philip this first hand when we would read flame posts by users on the official messaging board, but then have a civil interaction with the same users in the virtual space.

21:16-23:15: Philip delves into "the horrible horrible rabbit hole" of monetizing user engagement on social media, then makes a fascinating observation: Second Life actually monetizes as well per user as Google Ads does: "You absolutely can make a virtual world where people don't hurt each other... you just need the right business model." I relate that to SL and now VRChat are proving that a positive community and great community can make that possible.

23:16 - 25:00: Philip and I talk about VRChat, its evolving user community -- and we ask VRChat users to recommend places for us to visit.

25:01 - 31:00: The dilemma of content moderation in virtual worlds. I struggle a touch with this question, because it's "kinda unruly", leading established Second Life users to avoid noobs. Except, of course, the trolls. This is where we talk about the possibility of returning SL's old user-to-user social/creativity rating system ("I think we can experiment with that", says Philip), while acknowledging the dystopian implications featured in Black Mirror. Philip delves into mechanics to prevent gaming such a system. I mention VRChat's karmic system based on trustworthiness, which seems to be working, overall.

31:01 - 34:55: On the economy of the metaverse and the "black market" of VRChat where some 1000+ content creators are making so or all of their income from their platform. Philip compares the UGC monetization rates of the Second Life to ROBLOX (based on its stock filing), and says that more people (1600) make over $10,000 USD/year from their content in Second Life, than ROBLOX -- fewer than 1200. This is seriously mind-boggling, because Second Life only has about 600,000 monthly active users, compared to ROBLOX's 200 million MAU. As I note, SL has the rare distinction of being a metaverse platform where the community content creators make about as much revenue as the company itself. Philip points out that Linden Lab takes about 10% of Second Life's total virtual world economy as revenue.

34:56 - 40:22: "When's the tax revolt [in ROBLOX] start?" We talk about the legendary tax revolt in Second Life with Philip getting into the logic for Linden Lab initially imposing a precise cost for any bandwidth and server space consumed by users when creating content ("kinda like web3") -- and the unintended consequences this led to. (I.E., big ass tea crates everywhere.) 

40:45 - 49:44 : "When is Linden Lab going to lower the price of Second Life sims?" Philip redirects that question to discuss the physical age of the world and other issues that alienate people from using Second Life. I argue there should be a brand refresh and a new engine integrated in the viewer. This conversation shifts to Baby Boomers and the generational shift, its effect on the economy (and Second Life itself), and the literally dying off of SL's early user base. But then again, can the new metaverse platforms evolve and grow through new users over time? (Then again, aging social networks are also dealing with this challenge.)

49:45 - End: Speaking of aging, we talk about the oldest user-generated content in Second Life that still exists there (from Steller Sunshine now 20 years old!). That brings me back to my idea of having a Classic Grid alongside a New Grid option that runs on Unity and exists as log-in buttons in the same viewer. Philip says he plans to log back in and rez old content from his avatar inventory, and I talk about my official Snowcrash shrine in Second Life. (An NFT before the NFT was cool.)

More annotations as I keep listen - refresh this post!

Comments

[Tom Sullivan]

I enjoyed your conversation and would like to stay connected to it as it evolves.

I was in SL about 2004 and did some live voice acting there. Then I moved out to the opensim grids in about 2010-- Osgrid and Craft World specifically. Now I run servers for my own opensim regions on two grids and a Minecraft server for grandkids.

I'm quite interested in helping probe the whole "what's next" problem.

[daniloloko dawes]

lets make secondlife great again :D

[Kyz]

I don't know. Rosedale had his chance at a full blown metaverse. What he gave us was another walled garden that is still pricey on the high end of land ownership. And he gets a little weird with the philosophical bits.

I'd rather see Epic give it a go. They've got more experience with the kind of scaling a metaverse needs and the money to float cheap access from their other ventures. They could operate a metaverse at a "loss" if they so choose and do it well I think. Minus the virtual currency monetization, which is a personal peeve.

[Sly]

As a gamer that loves roleplay in SL. If they could harness a true engine and keep the full creative freedom we have. There would be no stopping second life. It would be like ready player one. Most of us have tried to adopt friends into second life. Who love roleplaying. Yet they can’t get past the performance of it compared to other platforms they are familiar with. Otherwise, yeah they would join they said in a heart beat. The concept they said is cool. Keep in mind this is a group of newly turned thirty year olds. We have some cash to spend. Second life isn’t dying, but they sure don’t help us with adoption rates. Our avatars most of the time look better than most other games. Yet when things load slow like dial up on high end pc gear they don’t get it. Combine SL as is with modern hardware and golden goose.

[WingsBell]

Thoroughly enjoyed this chat! Really loved your optimistic outlook on human behavior, hahaha! The thing I think affects people the most, especially core inworld players, is the 'lag' ... wonders if this dilemma will ever be addressed seriously? I know nothing of the tech side, it's all still MAGIC to me. But I do know inworld immersion has been a life savior to me over the years. Anyway, Welcome back Phillip and keep up the 'news' worthy blog James!! I rarely ever miss reading your New World Notes! Regards, Sunbeam (Jewell) Magic

[0xc0ffea]

(reposted here from reddit)

The romanticized contiguous world nature of SL is its Achilles heel.

It bottlenecks content delivery, presents tons of data to the viewer which then blindly renders all of it while trying (and failing) to work out which items are of most importance and should get textures first.

Flying over mainland doesn't work and can't ever work, after a few moments the world all but vanishes as content streaming and unpacking fails to keep up, there is no way to look ahead and send data. Region crossing are not, and can never be, seamless.

It encourages the very worst environment design decisions

There is a reason no one else does this. They don't do it because it's easier not to, they do it to maintain a performant player focused experience. Game dev 101 - Don't have the player loading content they aren't going to see.

Telehubs were a disaster, they got gamed and turned into malls and mazes you couldn't escape from. If Philip used SL recreationally and not as a superstar game god, he would have known that.

Lots of "grown ups" play minecraft .. who do you think makes all the content, mods, games, packs, mega builds, server components and so on. Kids aren't up to their elbows in Java, and if they aren't on public servers they are likely playing with adult family members. Roblox is the same, kids can and do developer stuff, but a lot of the content is made by adults.

SL's interface isn't "complex". SL as a platform has depth, depth requires high level tools.

"Death" in SL combat teleports the player home. Where-ever on the grid that might be. This is hard coded in and is why no combat systems in SL use the built in avatar health system. Players getting "teleported" in and out of a region is also a pinch point for region load, doing this frequently in a game setting seriously impact performance for all other players.

SL as an antidote to engagement based systems like Facebook precisely underscores why SL has been in the doldrums for over a decade and everyone uses facebook. Virtual worlds MUST be engaging.

LOL .. Philip finding people in world suddenly polite and apologetic .. If the game god walks up to you, be nice. Be super frikin nice.

Build and they will come is NOT TRUE. Not even a little bit. For every hundred great engaging SL builds, there is one that actually has more than 3 people at it half the day.

Philip is out of touch with how SL operates technically. The lag we had in 2004 is not the lag we have today.

The problem isn't attracting brand new people, the problem is getting people to stay or return.

The new grid new engine idea was Sansar. No one used it. It crashed and burnt.

SL needs fundamental platform advancement. If that means old content dies, then it dies. SL must be a living world, not a mausoleum. Active users will replace everything that is lost, and if they don't, maybe it wasn't actually that important.

[Kaylee]

It's interesting what you were saying about the gradual aging of the users over the years. When I attend inworld community conferences I notice the increasing age of the users and participants. I've presented at and volunteered at VWBPE and OSCC (OpenSim) over a number of years and run into the same group of organisers, volunteers and participants year after year, so I am conscious of their (and my) gradual aging. On the other hand, my students that do lessons in SL are eternally young as there is a fresh crop of 18 - 25 year olds every year. It's a little disorienting sometimes :-)

[jmenmer]

I am a software developer and sl player since 2012. I love sl but now i will be critical. For me the biggest problem with Second Life is that it doesn't evolve fast enough to technological advances, likewise, the TOS are obsolete and instead of promoting the technological advance of the platform, they limit it too much. Currently, video games and metaverses are adopting the "Play to Earn" paradigm, the use of NFT's and the integration with cryptocurrencies. For me as a developer it is extremely important that Second Life incorporates all these technologies soon (or I will be forced to look for other options) and as a player I must say that if I do not earn money the game is simply not interesting. For Linden Labs the economy of the game seems to be in the background, it is as if it were a communist country. wake up! The most important thing about Sl is the economy of the game! If they cannot be simple reality, they are doomed to disappear!

[Pointer]

The new engine is a very good idea.

"The new grid new engine idea was Sansar. No one used it. It crashed and burnt."

The modern engine idea was so good, that one of the few or the only thing appreciated about Sansar was exactly the visuals from the new engine.
Nobody used Sansar, but not because of the idea of the engine. If your game has pretty graphics, but little else, you paved the way to a predictable failure. Classic. Also the infamous loading times. In 2017, when most people were on A/DSL, Linden Lab thought: "people are making rooms that are several gigabytes to download? This is fine".
https://everythingisviral.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/this-is-fine-meme.jpg
It burned well.

[Diavkha Macabre]

Wonderful conversation and I hope to hear more in the future from SL's godfather.

Some interesting and raising questions about longevity and how to bring in new users, as a platform SL is still popular with its established user base and while its growth has slowed down in recent years there are still new people joining from time to time.

Its unique features is what makes it stand out among its peers, something that should be promoted more. LL needs to bring in those new creators and social media people to spread the word and show how much freedom in content creation and community there is on SL.

I don't think SL looks "old" as time has passed the graphical features of the platform have improved, the main issue with SL is retention. How can you bring in new users and keep them on the platform?

In terms of aging, no one can stop or prevent this, all things in life are finite and the only way SL can continue to exist and grow is to open its doors for new users who will take over the older ones.

[Medhue Simoni]

Here's an SL story of mine. I once had a woman contact me, wanting to buy a bicycle for a friend. She told me, this Friend, was her sister, whom lives on the other side of the country. I sent her sister a bicycle, and a week later the woman contacted me again. She said, "OMG, it was so much fun riding bikes together with her sister. She said it felt just like they were kids again riding their bikes around the neighborhood. Again, from opposite sides from the earth.

[Medhue Simoni]

On Unreal Engine's Marketplace, my commission rate is 12%. Generally speaking, I pay Linden Lab around 17% if you add up all my costs in Second Life. I've looked deeply at Roblox, but I just can't do it. They want far too much. I'd be wasting my time. VRchat, as far as content, is a complete joke. Thank god Unity has the mecanim rig system, as VRchat would be boring without it. Unreal and Tim Sweeney have the right mindset for the metaverse. I've only been selling on Unreal for 8 months now, and it's entirely replaced my real life income working for a game company.

[Medhue Simoni]

Please don't make SL2 with Unity. Seriously, Unreal is a much better engine, and you are going to need Nanite for SL2 to even be functional. We all know how things work when anyone can lay down "prims", lol. I've worked on games in Unity for years, and it's never been a fun experience. Their realtime team editing is a nightmare to use. There are half a dozen different shading set ups in Unity, and none of them are as easy, nor as good as Unreal. I've played with almost every single engine out there, and Unreal Engine is by far the most fun to actually use.

[KST]

oh come on pleaaaase ... why would second life would need a phillip rosedale who was responsible for the nearly linden lab crash years ago - AND his Hi-Fi project which he crashed too instead of make it the way the users wanted to have ???

Leave that guy out of this world !!! Before he crashes whole SL selling the rest to META!

[Kyz]

@Medhue Agree on all points. And the income is real money, not nickel and diming on virtual currency so the company can escape the legal liability of doing that with real world money.

If Epic doesn't do it, I wouldn't be surprised if UE is the tool someone else does it with. Core Games built on UE proved part of the concept of user generated spaces, it just needs a company/project to push UE to full blown virtual world.

[Kake Broek]

Kajagoogoo revival?